Cage of Night (12 page)

CHAPTER FIVE

The next night, they went to the well together.

I'd been following her since just after dinner. She went to the library, she went to a friend's house, and then she started to drive home, but suddenly turned west on a street leading out of town.

Fifteen minutes later, she pulled up on the county road running past the woods.

Garrett was already there. He sat in his own car, a two-year old Pontiac Firebird. This must have been his night off.

She parked behind him, on the edge of the gravel, and walked up to his car.

He got out.

Their kiss was immediate, and long and deep.

I looked away.

The jealousy was the worst part of all this. It made me frantic. I sensed that someday I wouldn't be able to control myself.

They went up the hill to the woods holding hands.

That made me even more jealous than the kiss. In a strange way, holding hands is more intimate than kissing. It signifies that there's a real relationship there.

I sat up on the hill behind them, pulled off to the side just as they were.

I watched them in my binoculars as they crossed the moonlit upslope leading into the woods.

Hansel and Gretel, I thought.

They were silhouettes, and then they were gone entirely, the woods swallowing them up.

I moved.

I wanted to see everything they did at the well.

The snow of the last few days had blown away. The land was a dirty gray and brown. My feet crunched dead leaves, and almost stumbled over an infant rabbit that looked as if it had been ripped apart by a dog.

The woods scared me.

All light died.

The path was narrow and twisting. The image of Hansel and Gretel came back, and then the Grimm stories of my boyhood. I had the momentary sensation of being caught up in a dream. I thought of Myles' tapes, his being unable to distinguish between reality and fantasy.

Deep, deep darkness, and then an unnerving silence. Only the occasional crushed beer can, and the red wrapper of a Trojan, and a crumpled cigarette pack reassured me that this was a real place, and not part of some psychotic dream.

I kept walking, still scared.

To either side of the narrow path, demons and goblins huddled in the shadows, ready to spring. Or so I imagined. My sweat was icy.

Moonlight. Finally.

The valley, and the clearing, where the cabin and the well waited—

They had just reached the cabin when I got to the edge of the clearing and put the binoculars to my eyes.

They kissed again, this time their bodies inexorably entwined.

I saw her hand go to the back of his head.

I thought of how she'd done the same with Myles.

And with me.

I looked away.

Even the phantasmagoria of the dark forest was preferable to watching her kiss him this way.

When I looked back, she was pulling him to the well.

He frowned, reluctant to go.

But she tugged on him like a mother with an obstinate child, and eventually they reached the well.

Once more they kissed, and then she led him the last steps to the well itself.

They spoke for a few moments but the only sound I heard was the lonely prairie wind.

And then he looked down into the well.

Just leaned over the edge and looked down.

And then the blue glow appeared, and painted his face.

Or I thought it did anyway.

Was I imagining things just because I'd played Myles' tapes over and over?

Maybe there hadn't been any glow at all, blue or otherwise.

Just as there hadn't really been any strange muffled voice in my head when I'd been at the well.

And then he screamed.

Covered his face with his hands and screamed.

If there had been a glow, there was none now.

But the scream was undeniably real.

And when he was done screaming, he went into a modified version of the seizure that had overcome Myles, his arms and hands twitching into odd angles, his head snapping back constantly.

She took him in her arms, and there was something touching about the maternalism of it, the graceful and loving way she held and caressed him. I thought of the Pieta I'd seen in a museum a few years ago, Christ dead in the arms of the Blessed Mother.

By now, he was weeping, weeping just as Myles had, and she held him even tighter.

And then, again as she had with Myles, she gradually turned her solace into sex, and they dropped to the ground next to the well, and began making love.

I felt rage, but sorrow, too.

There was nothing more there for me to see.

Or nothing more I cared to see, anyway.

I walked back to my car.

This time, the forest didn't scare me half as much as my own feelings did.

CHAPTER SIX

"Mrs. Brasher, it's me, Spence."

"Oh, hello, Spence."

"I'd like to speak to Cindy if I could."

A pause. "Well, I'll see if she's up."

"I'd appreciate that."

That's when I heard the whispering behind her. This being Saturday morning, they were probably having a late breakfast. Cindy probably heard my name and started whispering to her mother that she didn't want to talk. Her mother, who had cupped the phone with her hand, started whispering back.

Cindy came on.

"Hello?"

"Hi."

"Hi, Spence." Not exactly warm and enthusiastic.

"I wondered if we could have lunch today."

"Don't you have to work?"

"I traded with somebody."

"Oh."

"I really think we should talk."

Pause. "You know I'm dating your friend Garrett, don't you?"

I laughed. "I'm not sure I'd call him my friend exactly."

"He wouldn't be happy. You know, if we had lunch."

"We could always go over to Dover." Dover was seventeen miles away, a small town that swelled in the summer because of the wealthy people who had homes on the river.

"Well—" she said.

"I want to talk to you about some tapes."

"Tapes?"

I wanted to hook her so she couldn't say no.

"Yeah. Right before he died, Myles recorded a couple of cassette tapes." Now I paused. I wanted to make this as dramatic as possible. "About the well."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. He was pretty screwed up about it."

"You have the tapes?"

"Uh-huh."

"How'd you get them?"

She was hooked, all right.

"His folks gave them to me."

"His folks? They know about the well?"

"Yeah."

She didn't say anything for a time, then: "What time do you want to pick me up?"

"Around noon."

"Will you bring the tapes?"

"All right."

"I'd like to borrow them."

"For what?"

"You know, just to listen to them. David had quite an imagination."

"I'll bring them along."

"Around noon, then."

"Right."

On Saturday, the National Guard Armory is a busy place.

Weekend warriors from four different counties come here to play soldier. Having served as an enlisted man, I had a slightly superior attitude to the Guardsmen, just as enlisted men who'd seen combat in Nam had a slightly superior attitude toward me for having spent my three years in the wilds of darkest New Jersey.

The Armory was filled with trucks covered in camouflage, with rifles being torn down and put back together, and with a lot of guys standing around drinking coffee and eating donuts. The Armory smelled of car oil and gun oil and smoke from a lot of cigarettes.

In the back of the vast, echoing warehouse area was a group of small offices.

I went to third door and knocked.

"Yes?"

I opened the door and peeked in.

Dr. Wylie, tall, bald, and slightly stoop-shouldered, sat in a chair at his desk. He wore his camouflage uniform. He'd been working on a set of papers. His pen was still poised above them. The office was small but tidy. On the wall behind his desk were several framed degrees.

"May I help you?" he said.

"My name's Spencer. I was in the Army until about three months ago. Friend of mine, Bill Nelson, said you saw him a few times and I was just wondering—"

"Hell, yes. C'mon in and close the door."

Dr. Wylie was a weekend warrior himself. But he'd had a long career as an enlisted man before this. His real job was that of psychologist. He had an office two towns away.

A lot of people just getting out of the service have certain adjustment problems. Bill Nelson, a Navy vet I knew, told me that he and some others always went to see Dr. Wylie. He didn't charge you anything, and he was really good at calming you down and helping you think through your problems.

He got up and poured us both a cup of coffee.

When we were all settled in, he said, "So how can I help you?"

"It's kind of embarrassing, actually."

And it was.

—There's this alien in this well, see, Dr. Wylie and it's going to come out someday and...

"I guess what I want to know is if people can all have the same delusion at the same time?"

"Could you explain that a little more?"

"Well, say I have a dog and I think he talks to me."

"All right."

"And then I tell my best friend and he doesn't believe me but then he starts watching my dog real close, just on the off chance that I'm telling the truth, and then one day he hears the dog talk."

"I see."

"And then he tells somebody else that my dog can talk, and this guy doesn't believe it, either. But then he starts watching my dog, and listening real hard, and then one day he hears my dog talk, too."

"All right."

"But the dog can't really talk. I just imagined it—and so did my friends. Does that ever happen?"

He was sipping coffee and nodding his bald head. "More often than you think."

"Really?"

"Sure. There's even a psychiatric term for it. Shared Psychotic Disorder."

"I guess I don't know what that means."

"It means that one person has a delusion and tells it to somebody else. This second person is suggestible enough to buy into the delusion, too, so he starts believing in it, and he finds other suggestible people, and he gets them to start believing it, too."

"But they really believe it? I mean, they're not faking?"

"Most of them could pass a polygraph test. They absolutely believe it's the truth. We see that with alien abductions all the time."

"Wow."

"That's not to say that there aren't some real alien abductions. I'm not one of those people who rule out all possibilities. But a lot of the cases I've heard of are part of a Shared Psychotic Disorder. Usually happens to people with very creative minds. They're more open to suggestion."

He put down his coffee cup. "Some of your friends trying to convince you of something you find hard to believe?"

"Something like that."

"And they all swear it's true?"

"Yes."

He watched me with shrewd brown eyes. "And you're starting to think that maybe it's true yourself?"

I felt my cheeks get hot. I thought of the night I heard a voice out at the well. An alien voice, yet. Creepy crawlies from planet Zanthar or galaxy Glakmo.

"Yeah." I smiled. "It's sort of like an alien abduction."

"I kind of figured."

"And they kept telling me about this creature and then I started hearing it for myself. Out at the well. What did you call that syndrome?"

"Shared Psychotic Disorder. But you mentioned the well. The one out by where the meteor landed last century?"

"Yeah. You know about it."

He smiled. "They've been telling stories about that well for over a hundred years. Wild stories."

"Shared Psychotic Disorder?"

He nodded.

"That's what it sounds like, huh?"

"Very possibly. If you're hearing alien voices."

There was a knock on the door. "Excuse me. Yes?"

A young guy in a blond crewcut and a camouflage uniform stuck his head in the door. "We're still having trouble with that all-terrain vehicle, sir. I'm not sure it's going to be ready for this afternoon."

"Give it a good try, will you?"

"Yes, sir."

"We built a lot of today;s drill around that machine, Corporal."

"Yes, sir. I'll do my best, sir."

He saluted and was gone.

When Dr. Wylie looked back at me, I was smiling. I felt great relief.

No aliens in the well.

No voices in my head.

A deeply disturbed young woman named Cindy Brasher had simply imagined the alien properties of the well.

As had Myles and Garrett, when they went into their seizures, the idea for which Cindy had probably planted in their minds in advance.

Just as I'd imagined the voices and the icy blue glow I'd glimpsed the other night.

"God, I'm glad I talked to you." Then, "Does it sound like I'm nuts?"

He laughed. "Not at all. Sounds like you got caught up in what I call the 'campfire syndrome.'"

"What's that?"

"Well, you take a group of perfectly sane adults of average or above intelligence, and you put them out in the woods around a campfire late at night. And then somebody starts telling monster stories, the way kids always did at summer camp. And if you tell the stories long enough and well enough, these perfectly sane and intelligent adults begin to wonder if there isn't something in the woods, after all. So for the rest of the night they're very jittery. Probably can't sleep. And they begin to hear things and see things. That's the 'campfire syndrome.' It's kind of a lower order of the Shared Psychotic Disorder."

"Man, I feel better."

He smiled. "I wish I had this effect on everybody I saw."

"I really appreciate it."

"My pleasure."

I stood up and put my hand out to shake.

He had a quick, hard grip like a snakebite.

"Everything else going all right?"

I felt exultant. No aliens.

"Everything else," I reported gleefully, "is going just fine."

Now I really could help Cindy, and win her back in the process.